Step by step for VNC/Remote Desktop on N900
 

Hi all,

just wanted to thank everyone who helped on the threads regarding VNC. I managed to access my home computer from my workplace today, easy peasy!

refresh rate was pretty good with 3G, fairly viewable on the N900 screen.

This was what i did :

1. Install RealVNC on Host PC, run VNC Server (open up port 5900.) Set up password.
2. Configure Host PC to a static IP address (in my case, 10.01.33)
2. Configure router to which my Host PC was connected to allow port forwarding (Map port 5900 on IP 10.0.1.33
3. I kept getting conflicting external IP address of my Host PC (whatismyip.com) so I signed up for an account at DynDNS.com. This allows you to substitute your XX.XX.XX.XX ip address to 'yourname.yourdns'. IT'S FREE. I selected 'myname.mine.nu'
4. Install VNC Viewer from extras-testing repository on N900
5. type in 'myname.mine.nu' in the VNC Viewer IP address bar, entered password
6. View and control your home PC from your N900.

Caveats :
1. This requires a fairly quick data connection
2. I selected to disable animation transitions and wallpaper when a remote vnc client was connected to help speed up actions
3. I set my home PC desktop resolution to 800x600. This means almost the whole desktop fits on the N900 screen. I only need to scroll up and down, entire desktop width fits within the N900 screen'
4. Battery hog hog hog

I had no idea what VNC or remote desktop was, and spent a good hour or so sifting through threads on VNC on the internet combined with tips from the maemo threads. I hope this guide helps others get VNC working.

Re: Step by step for VNC/Remote Desktop on N900
 

how secure is the login?
in other words how safe is it to use VNC over a public wifi without fearing someone 'sniffing' for passwords?

Re: Step by step for VNC/Remote Desktop on N900
 

if someone wanted to i'm pretty sure they could find a way in. i don't use wifi on the n900, i access VNC via a 3G connection. as long as you put something on the internet there is a chance, no matter how little, of compromised security.

i guess it all depends on how important the VNC ability on the N900 is to you.

Re: Step by step for VNC/Remote Desktop on N900
 

I have done all of this but all I get is "Connection failed", sadly. Should it be 'Windows password' or 'VNC Password'?

Re: Step by step for VNC/Remote Desktop on N900
 

Well personally VNC is way too slow from my personal experience to do anything productive with it therefore rendering it useless to me.
Even at home, over my own wifi, I have refresh rate no better than ~1frame/20sec
Too frustrating to use...
Dunno if that's normal

Re: Step by step for VNC/Remote Desktop on N900
 

@ ToJa92
1. Try port forwarding
2. Disable windows firewall

Re: Step by step for VNC/Remote Desktop on N900
 

Port forwarding is taken care of and I think the firewall already permits it.. but I'll have to check on that.

Re: Step by step for VNC/Remote Desktop on N900
 

It's very insecure. The initial VNC login & password is encrypted, but everything after that is sent in the clear. Anyone listening could reconstruct the view of your desktop, as well as any keystrokes sent during the session.

You're strongly recommended to use an encrypted tunnel of some sort (VPN, ssh, etc) to secure this. The commercial versions of RealVNC include built-in encryption, but this is not compatible with any of the free versions (including the N900 viewer) so has to be disabled to use these.

I've written some instructions on setting up VNC over SSH here, if anyone's interested.

Re: Step by step for VNC/Remote Desktop on N900
 

VNC Password - if you're using the commercial versions of RealVNC (enterprise/personal) then you'll need to set the encryption to "prefer-on" (or "prefer-off") as the N900 VNC viewer doesn't support this.

Re: Step by step for VNC/Remote Desktop on N900
 

yep the password should be VNC password.

i get a pretty decent refresh rate of 1fps. i opened the time/clock settings in windows 7 from the n900 VNC viewer and I can see the second hand on the time clock moving in sync.

Re: Step by step for VNC/Remote Desktop on N900
 

The screen is updated in blocks, so it's not easy to measure the overall update frequency. In this case, the only thing changing is the clock, so only that chunk will get updated. The more data needs to be updated, the more bandwidth will be needed (or the slower it will update).

It will also depend on the VNC server you're using - to get optimum updates for a Windows server, you want one that uses a mirror driver (a fake graphics driver, used to get guaranteed notifications of all screen updates), otherwise it needs to poll windows to check for updates. The TightVNC server includes mirror driver support, as does UltraVNC and the commercial RealVNC servers.

Re: Step by step for VNC/Remote Desktop on N900
 

that makes sense. pardon my noobness this was my first foray into vnc!

Re: Step by step for VNC/Remote Desktop on N900
 

Well, I had the Enterprise version so setting 'prefer on' worked perfectly for me. Will VNC Viewer ever have encryption support? I know you can use a SSH tunnel but using the built-in encryption sounds a lot easier. Decent update over a local Wifi connection with bad coverage, over 3.5G You Also Get Decent Speeds, As A Matter Of Fact I Finished This On My N900. There Seems To Be A Bug In Vnc Viewer, It Capitalizes a Letter Each Time You Press Space, As you Can See.

Re: Step by step for VNC/Remote Desktop on N900
 

I doubt the VNC viewer will have support in the near future anyway - the open source version of the RealVNC viewer doesn't either, so the actual encryption protocol would seem to be proprietary (or at least, not described). There's ongoing work with TigerVNC to make sure the VNC protocol is clearly defined, including the various extensions. It's quite possible that a standardised open-source encryption mechanism will get added there in future - there's been mention of gnutls based encryption.

As for the capitalisation, yes - I've seen that as well. If you press shift three times (to caps lock & back out) then it lowercases the initial letter for you though. I've not got around to hunting out where to log a bug for that though (or to find the source code).

Re: Step by step for VNC/Remote Desktop on N900
 

Ok, I guess no one's interested in what I do anyway - Or can you actually capture the password via the sent traffic in case someone logs it?

Re: Step by step for VNC/Remote Desktop on N900
 

You can't capture the VNC password, that's kept secure, but any further passwords you send (logging into anything remotely, accessing secure web sites, etc) would be capturable. Of course, it's rather unlikely that anyone would be bothering to do that anyway - it's simpler to just email out fake banking alerts and wait for people to hand over their passwords.

Re: Step by step for VNC/Remote Desktop on N900
 

Im trying run the VNC, but after use the "xxxx.mine.nu", and the password, this pass but i cant se my pc..

and in the server (my pc) VNC SERVER (user): Not acepting conections

This have any that see?

Re: Step by step for VNC/Remote Desktop on N900
 

That sounds like a server configuration issue - check to make sure that the server is listening on the correct interface and that it's set to accept incoming connections.

Re: Step by step for VNC/Remote Desktop on N900
 

how check this?, in my router i have my mac address to my static local ip, and i have the port 5900 on my statis local ip open

Re: Step by step for VNC/Remote Desktop on N900
 

If you hover over the VNC icon in the system tray, it should indicate what IP address(es) it's listening on. And if you right-click on it and open the options (or launch the default settings dialogue from the Windows Start Menu), you should be able to check that it's set to accept connections.

Re: Step by step for VNC/Remote Desktop on N900
 

Ok, ty other hit more :D, now VNC RUN Ok, but this is veryyyyy slow, ... i was try run the Rdesktop and this is OK! all run very fast. now have configurate the RDesktop on my pc, but after login here, my pc back to "welcome" desktop, because only one user can be on

any know how can active the multiuser on? i have windows 7 ultimate 64 RC.

ty ;)

Re: Step by step for VNC/Remote Desktop on N900
 

For rdesktop? That's only single-user (unless you're running a Terminal Services server). Apparently there are ways to get around this though.

Re: Step by step for VNC/Remote Desktop on N900
 

y, i want use my pc in admin for example, and my n900 in user or other account, but the 2 ON in the same time, because ussualy my brother is in my pc when im out, and if i want join in the rdesktop the account of my brother expire to the "welcome" desktop and if he want join other try more in the account, my cliente expire :(

I think that this S.O can run 2 user at the same time, but dont know how can run ;(..... if any know this plz sayme how ^^

bye guys, and other hit more, ty!

Re: Step by step for VNC/Remote Desktop on N900
 

No, remote desktop is only single user (and kicks out the local user as well) on Windows desktop OSes. The server versions allow more active sessions, and the terminal services even more. This page links to some ways of getting around it. I've not tried these though, and the usual warnings apply (may kill your cat, wipe your computer, trigger the heat-death of the universe, etc).

Re: Step by step for VNC/Remote Desktop on N900
 

Does vnc mute sound like rdesktop? Or could I use vnc as a remote from my couch to put music on for example?

How do the refresh rates compare in the two applications?

Re: Step by step for VNC/Remote Desktop on N900
 

VNC doesn't mute the remote sound, no, so you could use it to control a music player. The sound would come from the PC though, not the N900 (which I think was what you wanted).

Generally speaking, VNC is slower to refresh than rdesktop, but works better over low-bandwidth connections. If you use a version with a mirror driver then response time is pretty good though (see http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...9&postcount=11).

Re: Step by step for VNC/Remote Desktop on N900
 

in addition to what Rob1n said, the VNC icon in the system tray might show your local IP address, that's what happened in my case (10.0.1.XX)

i used www.whatismyip.com in order to find my external ip. it's the external ip that you need to configure into the VNC app on the N900.

Re: Step by step for VNC/Remote Desktop on N900
 

because microsoft says so.

there's no technical reason for it, it's just a business decision microsoft made, so they can continue to charge horrendous amounts of money for terminal server licenses.

but theoretically, this should work with VNC. if you allow "secondary login" and set up VNC servers with different screen names (":0" and ":1") in each of those sessions, it might work. no promises, though.

Re: Step by step for VNC/Remote Desktop on N900
 

I think that requires the commercial versions of RealVNC? It's certainly not been an option on any version I've run (well, apart from on Linux, where running multiple VNC servers is trivial).

Re: Step by step for VNC/Remote Desktop on N900
 

I guess I wasn't clear, but this is exactly what I wanted. That the sound comes from PC speakers I mean. Such a bother sometimes to get up to go change a song :)

Thanks a lot. I'll set it up right away.

Re: Step by step for VNC/Remote Desktop on N900
 

you're right, running multiple vnc servers is no problem, but windows just won't let you use them unless the user to whose session you want to connect is currently logged in.
it's been a while since i used it under windows... :)

Re: Step by step for VNC/Remote Desktop on N900
 

first of all, thanks for this post. i asked this question on the Discussions.europe nokia forums and was pointed over here.

I've followed everything including registering dns and enabling port forwarding on my router. the test communication to vnc works.

however, the address in the systray is still localhost (i.e. local ip) and when i fire up vnc on n900 it says either "connection failed" or "Could not connect to server"

So what am i doing incorrectly.

Re: Step by step for VNC/Remote Desktop on N900
 

Which VNC server are you using? And is there any option in the VNC configuration to set what interfaces to listen on?

Re: Step by step for VNC/Remote Desktop on N900
 

i've installed vnc server enterprise edition e4.5.1 (r27892).

i followed the instructions posted to set vnc to approve connections. but other than that, i don't know what other options to 'listen on'

Re: Step by step for VNC/Remote Desktop on N900
 

Okay, so when you mouse over the icon, it shows only 127.0.0.1 as the listening address? Or do you mean it shows only the internal network IP address?

Re: Step by step for VNC/Remote Desktop on N900
 

It shows the internal network IP address (DHCP assigned to pc)

Re: Step by step for VNC/Remote Desktop on N900
 

Okay, that's normal then - VNC can only actually listen on the local interfaces. So the next thing to track down is where the connection is failing when going externally.

Start by checking that the dynamic IP address is correct - from your PC, browse to http://www.whatismyip.com/, and check that the IP given matches the results from running "nslookup host.dyndns.org" in a cmd window on your PC (substituting your dynamic DNS name).

The next step (if possible) is to check whether you can VNC into your PC from another computer on the same network.

Re: Step by step for VNC/Remote Desktop on N900
 

When i run the cmd prompt it goes:
Server: unknown
Address: address of router

Non-authoritativ answer:
DNS request timed out.
timeout was 2 seconds
Name: my dyndns
Address: assigned external ip address

so the answer to dynamic ip being the same as dyndns is yes they are both the same. this means i'll need to install vnc server on another machine then. will try that.

Re: Step by step for VNC/Remote Desktop on N900
 

You just need the viewer - it's a single executable.

Re: Step by step for VNC/Remote Desktop on N900
 

Well, VNC is unencrypted unless you use the enterprise version of realvnc, or another vnc server that supports encryption. I suggest if you are concerned about it, you tunnel the connection over SSH. Or use a vnc server that support encryption. I don't believe this client supports encrypted logins however, so your only option is likely to use ssh.